I present to you a matter of opinion. Observe this Modblog post about a guy who got a tattoo of a nautilus and felt that the finished product looked unreasonably similar to a cock. There's a lively discussion going on in the comments on that entry, in which the rights and responsibilities of the artist and client are being so thoroughly discussed that I don't want you to do any more of it here. My question is simple. Does it look like a cock, or does it not?
My failure to blog, comment, email, and otherwise exist in silicon form lately has been due to laptop repair and my imminent departure from work. Thursday I clean out my desk for good (except of course whatever I'll wind up forgetting and needing to go back for) and leave for LA for Christmas. A few select people, namely the ones whose email addresses I could find, have my cell phone number and are hereby charged with hauling me out to do something at least once between December 22 and December 27.
For now, that is all. Tomorrow I may yet get a chance to write a book review of an 800-page fantasy novel. Watch this space for thees and thous and names with too many Es and Ys in them.
Posted by dianna at December 20, 2005 10:20 PMI think it completely looks like a penis. More importantly, once you begin to think of it as possibly resembling a penis, it's impossible to un-see it.
Posted by: sean at December 20, 2005 11:41 PMTrue. It's like one of those trick pictures where once you see the old woman with the big nose, no matter how hard you try to look at just the girl in the fur coat you still see that damn nose.
Posted by: Dianna at December 21, 2005 09:52 AMisn't that a seaman? i always see the naked lady and not the nose. mmm, naked lady.
Posted by: michele at December 21, 2005 10:00 AMNot only is it a cock, but the eye follows you across the room. ItÂs creepy.
Posted by: jason at December 21, 2005 10:58 AMEvidently I am not the right person to ask about this, because I can't make it look like a penis no matter how hard I stare. I totally don't get it.
Posted by: katie at December 21, 2005 02:23 PMI thought it looked cock-esque, but I went in looking for cock, so cock is what I saw.
As an experiment, I showed just the tattoo to Kelsey and asked what she thought it looked like. She said a cross-section of a shell. I asked if she saw anything else, and after looking at it for a few minutes and saying things like "elephant tusk" and "staircase," she gave up. So that would be one datapoint in favor of non-cock from an untainted source.
I do think, though, that it's pretty suspicious that the final segment has a darker, reddish hue compared to the other segments, making it resemble a glans. So I'd say the penis claim is not wholely without merit.
Also, the word you're looking for meaning "An image which can be seen as two different things, depending on how your brain organizes the visual data" is Gestalt. My personal favorite gestalt is Crow in the Mystery Science Theater 3000 theater; depending on how you look at it, he could be facing towards the screen or towards you, and once you see it one way it's hard to make yourself see it the other way.
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